Mana Mutation Menace (Journey to Chaos Book 3) (72 page)

She backhanded him on the other cheek and again denounced
him.

“You are like Theodosius I, who claimed to be the
legitimate 167
^th
Western Emor Emperor because he occupied the
capital and convinced the Eastern Emor Emperor that it was so! In truth, he was
a thug and a bandit who conquered with thugs and bandits. All you prove here is
that your precious ‘stability’ is nothing but brute force and fear. Such things
are chaotic in nature, devoid of any ‘law’ except the ‘Law of the Jungle.’”

  An ethereal tendril wound itself about Annala’s waist
and up towards her neck and the collar resting there. Annala didn’t flinch; her
fist clenched, her shoulders tensed, and sweat broke out all over her body, but
she didn’t blink or look away. Neither did Nulso’s body. His sense of awareness
was focused solely on Annala. Alexis and Meza took this opportunity to finally
pierce his Order Shield. Annala’s intervention provided the opening they
needed. To make sure Order didn’t notice, Annala slapped him a third time and
continued her scathing criticism.

“You can’t kidnap me. You yourself recognized me as Eric’s
property. To do so would be stealing. You can’t justify that. You can’t even
use Eminent Domain because you lack the consent of the governed to form a
ruling body of law.”

Sagart whispered hymns to boost Alexis’ and Meza’s strength.

“A mind
such as yours is wasted serving Lady Chaos. You should join my administrators.
I would place you in charge of every elf on this world; slave or free. I’ll
even remove the collar.”

Alexis and Meza, working together and with the power of
Sister Sagart's prayers, finally broke through. The latter ripped open a body-sized
hole in the Order Shield with his bastard sword and the former lunged with her
rapier. Order ignored the wound to his vessel. Hearing Annala’s reply was more
important.

She smiled politely. “I must respectfully decline. While
it is a tempting offer, the job security leaves something to be desired.”

Nulso’s body laughed. It was dry, mirthless, and robotic,
but a laugh nonetheless. Then he bashed Alexis and Meza aside as easily as swatting
bugs. They tumbled head and over heels away from him. It was terribly rude for
them to interrupt his conversation. They stood up and attacked again. Braced by
Sagart’s holy support, they were ready for another round.

“A polite
elf; will wonders never cease? To answer your question, this world must be
tamed before it can become truly orderly. As I said before, right now, it is a
powder keg. Furthermore, I am not invading. I was invited.”

All four elves present stopped whatever they were doing.
Order did not abide lies. His honesty was a fundamental aspect of reality. It
alone maintained the consistency of the Great Tree That Supports the Worlds and
stabilized every world fruit. If he said he was invited, then there could no
doubt that it was an irrefutable fact. However, none of them could imagine who
would do such a thing.  

“Y…
you
are Lunas’ proxy?” Annala asked.

“No. That
little shit was being obnoxious. I am here at the request of someone else,
whose identity I cannot reveal. Do you have any further objections to my
actions?”

Annala slowly shook her head.

“So be it.
If Eric’s property is what you wish to be, then so you shall remain forever.”

His tendril tapped the collar and Annala was obscured by opaque
eldritch light. A second later, it revealed her, and her hair was stark white
from root to tip. Even her skin was paler than before. The tendril withdrew and
Annala knelt at Nulso’s feet.

“Maiden,
return to your master.”

Annala stood, curtsied, and said, “Yes, Lord Order.”

Guided by the spiritual leash on her neck, she walked off
the battlefield in a state of serenity. With interest, Order noticed that she
was headed towards Hariana Inquires. Regardless of what the elves were planning,
it was irrelevant. Any resistance against his actions was futile.

“Those who
are empowered by Order the First Born are feeble before Lady Chaos the
Matriarch. In her name, bow down!”

The vessel's knees buckled. Order's aura dimmed and
thinned. Two golden blades impaled his chest through his back. They glowed with
the divinity of their owner, Tasio the Trickster. His face was a mask of cold
fury and his killing intent knocked five years out of everyone nearby.

“You
crossed the line, Order. I was going to allow my chosen to destroy this vessel,
but now I will do it myself!”

Nulso's head spun one hundred and eighty degrees and said,

“This
vessel is irrelevant. Would you not prefer to rescue your ‘grandchildren’? My
fragments are delivering them to Latrot as we speak.”

“Abyss
take you!”

He tossed his right-handed divine blade to Meza and the
left-handed to Alexis. His armor followed and split between them. Now he was
dressed in a simple cloak and sandals. In his right hand, he carried a
shepherd’s crook. This was his guise as “Tasio the Shepherd of Elves.” At once,
the pair of elves glowed with the same divine light as their deity.

“You have
my full authority as Seraph of Chaos. Kill him with my blessing.”

The guardian and the ordercrafter hunter made the Triangle
of Arin. Tasio nodded and vanished. In response, Order summoned more enforcers
to guard his vessel while it recovered.

Meza pointed accusingly at him with his gloved hand and a chaotic-orderly
hybrid aura glowed from it. He raised his new blade above his head. Alexis charged
her own with chaotic verses pounding in her mind. Already divine chaos, it charged
even further. Together, they agitated the new enforcers out of their orbits.

“All things arose from Chaos, and therefore all things are
the children of Chaos. She is their mother, their grandmother, their
matriarch!”

Meza spoke slowly and deliberately. Each word was a gouge in
the enforcer's power and a jab at Order himself. Alexis was a flurry of
activity. Dancing around the corpse, she smote enforcers with quick and
practiced strikes.

“She is head of the Family of Creation and therefore its
authority figure. As a servant of authority, it is your duty to obey.”

Every word was backed by Meza’s iron will and genuine
piety, and every one of them weakened the enforcers, thus making them easy prey
for Alexis’ divine and elven swords. She cut through half of them before the
end of the verse.

“You are a contradiction of purpose; a defiance of
authority!”

The remaining enforcers could no longer withstand Meza’s
words and Alexis’ chaotic blades. They faded out of physical reality and Alexis
fired a chaosified mana beam that finished them. It washed over Nulso’s corpse
and melted the front of its Order Shield. Then she jumped back and prepared to
attack the main threat directly.

“You disrupt the peaceful life here. Your actions
invalidate any welcome you may have received from a resident here.”

Alexis jump-slashed the corpse's chest, but it blocked the
divine sword with its staff, thus leaving itself open for a jab to the face
with her smaller elven sword. It tried to grab her with its empty hand, but she
jumped back and brought the divine sword down on its elbow, severing it.

Meza was now close enough to attack physically. He followed
up her attacks by chambering and thrusting straight through the vessel's chest.
Then he removed one hand from the sword's hilt and placed it over Nulso's face.

"I came to give sight to the blind and take it from
the seeing."

Golden-brown light flashed and disfigured it.

The vessel was cut, burned, and mutating. It was blind.
Its head and limbs hung on to the main body by threads. Its aura burned and
steamed from contact with so much chaos. Yet Order himself remained unharmed. With
a single thought, he greyed out the immediate area and used its mana to restore
his vessel's essential functions and reattach its arm.

“I
recognize this combo. You are Meza, the Ordercrafter Killer. I have lost many servants
to you.”

Meza drew back his divine blade for another swing. “Namagomi
knows me by name? I’m flattered.”

Nulso’s body glared. On the next attack, it caught the
blades with its bare hands. This was a costly maneuver. The hands were now mutating
and ruined but worse still was the effect on the vessel itself. To block divine
blades, Order had to push more of his own divinity through the vessel than it
could safely handle. It was now deteriorating at an accelerated rate. However,
it enabled him to hold the elves in place while his ethereal hands plunged into
them.

While both were hardy warriors wearing armor warded
specifically to protect against intrusion by ordercraft, in addition to the
divine authority granted to them by Tasio, they simply weren’t good enough to
stop Order himself. He found their souls and Seed of Chaos with only little
more difficulty than Quando's. Their endless supplies of
kon
were also
available to him and he siphoned them freely to restore his vessel to perfect
health and condition.

"Those touched by chaos will never falter!"
Meza recited. "Their sword shall pierce any shield and their willpower
shall burst all restraints! They shall be free all the days of their lives!
Thus says the Matriarch!"

Order squashed his psalm's power. A layman's prayers
were nothing when both his soul and seed were gripped by the All-Encompassing
Hand. Those of a priestess were no better. Ten enforcers enveloped Sagart and
suppressed all her holy power while they drained her of it.

“Lady Chaos
did not give birth to me. My consciousness created my form within her body and
then I expelled myself. Therefore, I created myself.”

“Blasphemy!” Meza shouted while struggling in his grip.
“Heretic!”

Order ignored him and continued concentrating the seeds
within his opponents, but it was slow and difficult. The male, he observed, was
powered by his hatred of all things Orderly and based in the horrible things
he’d seen ordercrafters do. The female, he observed, was powered by her fear of
the same and what happened to her. Together with Nulso’s inability to act as a
proper channel for his power, he couldn’t simply brute force the seeds out of
them.

If he tried, then his vessel would collapse immediately
and he would fail in his goal to subjugate this village. If he searched for
weaker prey, they might destroy his vessel before he could accomplish his
objective. With Tasio’s authority, it was entirely possible. Never let it be
said that Order is impatient.

“Meza Filef,
look around you.”

Enforcers blockaded his village. They chased his people,
knocked them out, and stole their power. Even the guardians and ordercrafter
hunters were being subdued. Many trees were burning; homes and businesses
ruined. The Sage Tree, Dnnac itself, was occupied by them.

“You have failed.”

A spark of despair flashed in Meza’s heart and Order
exploited it. With a final yank, he pulled Meza’s seed from his body. Then he
dropped Meza, now white-haired and feeble, but Alexis remained defiant. Despite
the immense spiritual and physical pain involved in the process, she refused to
let go of her seed.

“You gain
nothing by resisting me. Even if you prevent me from taking your seed, you will
not escape my host’s implosion. As I speak, it is collapsing. At this range, it
will drag you with it and you shall spend eternity in a cold, silent, and
empty
void.”

Such a fate terrified Alexis more than Order’s enslavement
and undercut her resistance to him. He wrenched her seed from her body and she
joined Meza on the ground. In each hand, he held a Seed of Chaos. He had to act
fast, before his host broke down completely.

Its stomach had already collapsed and been replaced by a
hole into nothingness. This hole was expanding, and when it broke the
boundaries of the body, it would implode. His own Stability Authority would
prevent it from turning into a black hole and so the initial implosion would
only take about one tenth of the village with it. Thus, it was imperative that
he destroy the entire village and enslave all its denizens before that
happened.

With no one left to challenge him, he prepared to fire again.
One to destroy Dnnac and another, Hariana Inquires. The two of them together
would plunge this village into oblivion. In one move, he would derail the
technology exchange, prevent any future exchange from ever happening again,
keep elven slaves in their rightful place, and obliterate The Trickster’s
Chosen, thereby thwarting any plans Lady Chaos might have for them.

He fired.

“Even now, return to me with all your heart!”

One of the seeds soared away from Hariana Inquires to
Meza’s hand. It rested in the palm of his Order Negator Gauntlet. He pressed
that hand against his chest, returned to his elven state, and pointed at the
second with the same glove.

“Your faith has made you well!”

The glove shined with the eldritch light of Order mixed
with the golden-brown of Chaos, and that same hybrid glow surrounded the second
seed. It swerved away from the Sage Tree and instead arrived at Meza’s hand. He
shot it to Alexis’ body and cured her mortality.

“You used
my own authority against me. Impressive.”

“My every moment is dedicated to stopping you and humans
that serve you. My soul is polarized against you. I will use every tool at my
disposal, even your blasphemous power.”

“You are
not the first elf to say those words. You will be my slave yet.”

Meza took up both divine swords and brandished them. “Bring
it on, Namagomi!”

He sliced and slashed and cut with the authority of his
deity. This was a style created three thousand years ago, and one he mastered
three hundred years ago. No one had bested him in it except the current grandmaster,
and yet, he still couldn't best Order.